70 



CONSERVATION 



greater part of the forests have been cut 

 into lumber. In the Pacific Northwest we 

 are taking up the work while the forests^ 

 are still standing. This may be due to the 

 experience the lumbermen of these states 

 have had in the other lumber states, or as a 

 result of the campaign of education which 

 has been carried on during the past few 

 years for the conservation and protection of 

 our natural resources, including timber. 



If the total timber stand of the United 

 States is taken at fourteen hundred million 

 feet, as given in various estimates, we are 

 justified in assuming that the four states, 

 Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana, 

 comprise about 700,000,000 feet of this 

 amount, or practically fifty per cent. 

 Added to this is the additional factor of 

 the low estimates prepared in the past, due 

 to the fact that because of very low prices 

 for timber products at the mills, the standing 

 timber of the Northwest has had a com- 

 paratively small value, and therefore esti- 

 mates have included only that material which 

 could be profitably handled at present prices. 

 With increased prices, which must neces- 

 sarily come about as the timber is removed 

 from other sections of the country, cutting 

 can be conducted more closely and our es- 

 timates will naturally be greatly increased. 



Losses from forest fires in the region cov- 

 ered by this paper have in years pa^t been 

 very heavy. The Indians were accustomed 

 to burn large tracts of forest in order to pro 

 vide more open spaces. In the settlement of 

 the country the farmer and the rancher 

 looked upon the timber on his land largely 

 as a hindrance. It was slashed and burned, 

 and quite often the burning extended to 

 the adjoining timber and vast damage re- 

 sulted. 



The beginning of logging operations also 

 introduced a great menace to the timber of 

 these States. Most of the logging is done 

 bv steam engines and log transportation is 

 by logging railroads, so that the timber 

 country is full of spark-emitting machines, 

 and, owing to inadequate protection by spark- 

 arresters, each one constitutes an eternal 

 menace during the dry season. The logger 

 also leaves behind him large tracts of cut- 

 over lands, on which probably more than 

 fifty per cent of the actual material of 

 the forest is left on the ground as waste. 

 In various ways fire reaches these slashings, 

 where it finds plenty of material to feed 

 upon, in proper condition for burning, and 

 the result is a conflagration that continu- 

 ously gains headway until finally it reaches 

 the live timber. 



The fire hazard of standing timber in these 

 states varies greatly, as does also the re- 

 sult of the ordinary forest fire upon the 

 growing forest. Along the coast of Wash- 

 ington and Oregon, is the fog zone, a belt 

 twenty-five miles or so in width, the live 

 timber of which is practically immune from 

 forest fires, except in cases of unusual con- 



ditions, or when a slashing fire has obtained 

 sufficient headway to dry out the forest ahead 

 of it and render the destruction possible. 

 Fires in this zone are usually confined to 

 cut-over lands, and the great majority of 

 these are burned over almost annually. Ow- 

 ing to the accumulated quantities of mate- 

 rial and its damp condition throughout most 

 of the summer, this debris is not consumed 

 to any great extent by any one fire, but con- 

 stantly recurring fires t^nd to place it in bet- 

 ter condition for burning each season. The 

 result is that on our cut-over lands we find 

 these annually recurring fires, which abso- 

 lutely prohibit any reproduction. 



Fire in the green timber of this belt gen- 

 erally kills the timber, usually developing 

 into a tree-top fire. In some cases logging 

 operations are able to follow and the re- 

 sult is not a total loss. 



Extending inland froin the fog belt to the 

 summit of the Cascade Mountains is a region 

 that becomes much drier during the summer. 

 The forests of this belt are confined to the 

 ridges of the Cascade Mountains, or the inte- 

 rior river valleys. It is here that we have 

 the greatest fire risk, and when a fire is once 

 started, it is most difiicult to control. The 

 accumulation of debris is very great, and 

 the standing timber becomes dried out for 

 long periods during the summer, so that any 

 fire losing control, usually gets into the 

 standing timber and, unless checked, does a 

 great amount of damage. 



East of the Cascade Mountains and in the 

 northern and eastern portions of the state, 

 adjoining the Idaho and British Columbia 

 boundaries, we have a pine forest, which con- 

 stitutes the third class of hazard. The forest 

 is essentially an open pine forest of mixed 

 ages. The accumulation of debris on the 

 ground is much smaller than that west of the 

 Cascades, but fires travel much faster in 

 the more open regions of this section. In a 

 great many cases the standing timber is not 

 entirely killed by being overrun by forest 

 fires. In other cases the damage is a total 

 one, and it has been found that in both 

 Idaho and Washington, the borer, so com- 

 mon throughout the fire-swept regions of 

 the middle Northwest, has commenced to 

 follow the path of the forest fire. And as 

 the prevalence of this worm is increasing 

 each year, it is only a question of time before 

 any timber burned by forest fire will be ren- 

 dered useless within the course of a yeaf 

 or so. 



The Panhandle district of Idaho and the 

 forest regions of northern and central Mon- 

 tana are very much similar in their nature 

 and in their risk to the forests of eastern 

 Washington just described. 



In the year 1902 occurred the most de- 

 structive forest fire known in Washington 

 and Oregon since settlement took place, the 

 damage to standing timber in Clarke and 

 Cowlitz Counties, Washington, alone being 

 $2,000,000, and for the states of Oregon and 



